Always enter a concert-hall or lecture-room as quietly as possible
Never push violently through a crowd at a public place. A lady will always find room made for her if she requests it, or if it is requested by her escort.
After escorting a lady to a place of amusement, a gentleman may ask permission to call the following morning or evening, and the lady must be at home to receive that call. She should take that opportunity to thank him for the pleasure she has enjoyed, and find some warm words of praise for the performance. To severely criticize on such an occasion is rude to the escort, who has intended to give pleasure, and the performance must be bad indeed where nothing can be found to merit a word of praise.
In visiting a fancy fair, too many persons act as if they were in a store, cheapening the articles offered for sale, and being careless about their criticisms and remarks. It is impossible to tell who may be wounded by such conduct. The very lady who offers you an article you pronounce "absolutely hideous" may have spent hours in its manufacture, and feel proportionately hurt at your remarks. Courtesy and words of praise are never more appreciated than by those who have spent weary hours in preparing for this most troublesome of all charities.
On the other hand, the position of a lady at the table of a fancy fair is necessarily an exposed one, and requires a great amount of modest dignity to support it. Flirting, loud talking, importunate entreaties to unwilling friends to buy your goods, are all in bad taste; and it is equally bad to leave your place every few moments to visit the refreshment-table in company with your gentlemen friends. We heard a lady boast once that she had been seventeen times in one day to the refreshment-table "for the good of the fair," and we could not but think the cause might have been aided without quite such a display of gastronomic energy. No true lady will follow friends all around the room offering goods for sale, nor force articles on reluctant purchasers by appealing to their gallantry.
In entering a fancy fair where many ladies are present, strict etiquette requires a gentleman to remove his hat, and carry it whilst in the room, but it is a rule much neglected.
It is rude for a lady to take advantage of the rule which prevents a gentleman from asking for change at a fair. If he says, in presenting a larger amount than the purchased article calls for, "Pray accept the balance for the object for which you are working," she may, of course, place the gift in her cash-box; otherwise it is more lady-like to give back the change.
SERVANTS.
IT would be difficult to express the sense of etiquette on this subject better than by quoting Lord Chesterfield's words:
"I am more upon my guard," he writes, "as to my behavior to my servants and to others who are called my inferiors than I am towards my equals, for fear of being suspected of that mean and ungenerous sentiment of desiring to make others feel that difference which fortune has, and perhaps too undeservedly, made between us."